Hartford Athletic Manager Brendan Burke Looks at 2025 Offseason
Chemistry and stability were big themes as the manager discussed how the club is preparing for the next season
After reflecting on the 2024 season, Hartford Athletic manager Brendan Burke was ready to look to the future, focusing on how the club planned to address some important issues and grow on and off the field.
Chemistry is key
Burke had identified chemistry as one of the most significant problems in the 2024 season, and a key issue to be addressed as the team prepares for 2025.
“So one [factor] is the [lack of] turnover prevents against that… last year we had as much turnover as you could possibly have in a pro environment, basically apart from zero [turnover]. This year we already have 11 players returning to the environment. So the locker room is inherently stable.”
From the 2023 to the 2024 season, the club returned only four players, and only Danny Barrera and Triston Hodge were among the top ten in minutes played. Heading into the 2025 season, the Latics currently have seven of their top ten most-used players returning.
“So I think we're going to benefit from the stability of the much less roster turnover and the people that we have to evaluate to add to the group are far fewer. We're not adding 18-19 guys to the group. You know that we're adding four to six maybe.”
And in terms of who those players might be, it comes back to chemistry.
“Now when we look at who we add…we're looking for ingredients in those guys, not necessarily get on a Zoom and measure them. I don't believe that you can do that to a person in one conversation or two or even three or four. I think when they're on the ground, you know [how] that plays out. But what you can do is background and make sure you're talking to people, make sure you're talking to old teammates and coaches and things like that.”
The plan here is that with fewer players to recruit - and an established culture - there will be fewer chemistry ‘misses,’ which Burke acknowledged as a problem.
“Last year, I think part of what I could have changed faster, but I maybe didn't realize how bad it was, was the chemistry in the locker room wasn't right. And it led to a lot of churn and burn.”
While the club did not disclose the reason for any specific player’s departure, the churn was obvious: Romario Williams, Enoch Mushagalusa, Jay Chapman, and Rece Buckmaster were all experienced veterans who departed during the course of the season. Brooks Thompson and Joe Schmidt were also sent out on loan.
That adds up to nearly a quarter of the opening-day roster, and when incoming players are taken into consideration, the Latics used 30 players during the 2024 season, the sixth most in the league, and the most in a single season in club history.
Continuing to invest in youth
After adding four to six players to the returning group, Hartford will have potentially 18 players under contract for 2025. Given that most clubs carry between 20 and 24 players during the season, it raises the question of who will make up the rest of the roster.
“The rest are Academy kids who had a whole year to develop and get closer to expectations closer to the level. Kauan Ribeiro’s one that I'm excited about. He's had a lot of almost-got-on-the-field type of nights in the back half of the season and he's got a good skill set and a good body for it and a good mind for it. So he's one I would expect to pop up somewhere along the way this year.”
If Ribeiro — or any other Academy player — is able to make a meaningful contribution in 2025, it will be a first for the club. Currently, Dren Dobruna (with eight appearances) and Kenan Hot (with 188 minutes played) are the two players on Academy Contracts who have been on the pitch the most. They’re also the only two to show up in a scoresheet, with Hot having scored one goal and Dobruna recording one assist.
Beyond academy players, the remainder of the roster will likely be made up of other youngsters in the mold of Mamadou Dieng and Pele Ousmanou.
“[W]e also want to continue to replenish kind of the roster with young, really high potential players because that's the only way you can be become a selling club and build in another revenue stream to support what we're trying to build, which is what I did in Colorado. And you can see how successful that is now. We were a small budget team in Colorado when I got there and it doubled, then it tripled, and now they're a big budget team and they're in the final and they're hosting it [Note: This interview took place before the final. Colorado Springs won the 2024 USL Championship]. That all happened in four years, and it's the same exact blueprint here.”
Identifying new talent
With rumored interest from other clubs in Dieng, there’s a possibility that ‘becoming a selling club’ is truly on the table for Hartford for the first time since this objective was first publicly identified in the 2019-20 offseason.
Selling a player like Dieng first requires identifying and signing them, and identifying those players is a challenging process. Burke has had success in the past with players like Michee Ngalina, and it does seem like Dieng might be the next one. It’s a process that, for Burke, starts with gathering information from trusted sources, but then watching a player in person himself.
“I don't outsource that I don't trust anyone else to do it,” he said. “I trust those sources to bring it to the point where I know I'm going to watch a high-potential player. And then it's just a matter of are they going to fit into our blueprint for for the team in general so that everyone clicks so that everyone's able to perform at the highest level individually they can because they fit together in the right way.”
Adapting to the Eastern Conference
Fitting together ‘the right way’ means adapting to the style of play in the Eastern Conference of the USL Championship.
“[T]here's a physicality to the East, and obviously the East blew the West out of the water this year [during the regular season]. I've never seen a league that lopsided. That speaks to the investment in the East. That speaks to some stylistic stuff though, like teams are bigger, more physical, more well suited to winning deadball situations, more willing to be direct. Do I think we need to change a ton? No, but we do need to make sure that we are competent in those areas. When I look back at the Indy game…we just got bullied. We just got pushed off the field physically.”
The Indy game was one example among several in the early part of the season. The Latics also struggled in home games against San Antonio and Colorado Springs, but as the roster turned over and the chemistry improved, so did the results, with the return fixture against Indy a clear example.
“[I] think when you saw us play them later in the year, here…we were able to grind through that part of it and make it about tactics and about the game with the ball at your feet. And it was nil-nil, it's kind of a boring game. But I think that for me was a sign of growth in our group that we were starting to connect the dots. We were starting to be able to push our style of play into the environment that we had to survive first to be allowed to play, if that makes sense.”
While that mentality came as the 2024 season progressed, in 2025, Burke aims to be there from the moment the first ball is kicked.
“I think that'll be our mindset from day one. Once we get through that phase of the game, I don't think too much has to change and I think it's about identifying the right personnel to impose your style of play.”
Improving off the pitch
In addition to building the right squad, there are also things that need to be addressed off the pitch. 2024 saw some major strides in this area, with the opening of Day Hill Dome giving the club an all-weather practice facility, alongside other upgrades to the training facilities at the club’s headquarters. Burke emphasized the role that these improvements play in building a foundation for the future.
“I think we addressed the performance side this year. I think Day Hill, the grass field, the indoor field, we have an unbelievable opportunity with this facility and what we've done here, what our ownership group have invested time and energy and money in to build us out our own in-house sports performance with the locker room and the video room. We're starting to make steps to catch up to the rest of the league, which is great. That's awesome.”
Burke identified one off-field issue that will remain in 2025: travel. The challenges with travel are obvious: with games against the Western Conference likely to be on the calendar again in 2025, the Latics will likely have to make several West Coast trips, which is not only expensive but potentially arduous, as there are few or no direct commercial flights from Bradley to some possible destinations. Other clubs have worked to solve these problems, and Burke is hopeful that something similar might work in Hartford, with benefits for the on-field product.
“That could be done through sponsorship. I know Rhode Island have a phenomenal sponsorship that affords them opportunities to travel in very different ways and that's important. That's part of what I talked about earlier with protecting the players. Being a player-centric environment I think there’s a…reality that we're turning that corner. I've been in environments where they turn that corner 10 years ago [and] I've seen the benefits. I've also been in other places where they're not quite there yet, but they've figured it out and they're trying to address it piece by piece. I would say that we're trying to address it piece by piece now, but travel is going to remain a huge issue for us next year.”
A key offseason need is properly preparing for the next season, and Burke and his staff now have the advantage of a full runway. In 2023, Burke’s hiring was not announced until December, and with the accompanying roster overhaul, the club’s effective offseason was extremely curtailed. One way this advantage immediately manifests itself is in the ability to readily use data gathered in the past season to plan for the next.
“So the process I can put that in front of me right now, that's just the injuries that we incurred last year that saw anyone miss any significant amount of time, the time of year that they happen, the nature of the injury. And this information is taken and put into individual training programs over the winter so that guys arrive to preseason in a better condition to handle the training that we want to throw at them. But it also comes back on to the staff in terms of are we training extensively or intensively? What muscle groups are we hitting with the type of technical training that we're doing, but also tactically. And so there's there's so many layers to protecting the player on the technical side that we're addressing every minute detail of and that'll help us get better as a group. You stay healthier, your best players are available for more games.”
These are normal components of offseason preparation for a professional club, but they’re things that coaching turnover and roster turnover have prevented the Latics from fully embracing for most of their history. This offseason presents a new opportunity and the hope that the team will hit the ground running in 2025.